


Blue

by Warpony



Series: Feral Echoes [1]
Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Adding To The Party, Gen, New Beginnings, Original Character(s), Past Gladiator, Situational Mutism, past enslavement
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-18
Updated: 2020-04-18
Packaged: 2021-03-01 18:15:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,216
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23721451
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Warpony/pseuds/Warpony
Summary: The Mighty Nein meet Brunnera, a Firbolg Fighter, fresh in stolen freedom from a life as enslaved gladiator but still burdened by a heavy collar on his throat.* * * * *Origin Point of a Larger WIP involving a D&D Original Character and the Critical Role Mighty Nein. The style of this work is different than most of the works that will follow in the series.
Series: Feral Echoes [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1711534
Comments: 6
Kudos: 35





	Blue

It was forty-nine years since he’d spoken his real name aloud when Brunnera met the Nein. Forty-nine years since he’d been free. Sixteen thousand and seventy two days. That much Brunnera was sure of. He’d never lost count of the days. Not since the collar made of slick, black metal had been locked around his neck. He’d lost track of plenty of other things but that was one of the things branded on his soul. 

Sixteen thousand days of chains and brutal masters, gravel fighting pits and sandy colosseums. Sixteen thousand days of rusty weapons, screaming mobs and the spilled viscera of captured monstrosities or other gladiators that Brunnera had no way to help but free them eternally from the hellscape they lived in. Sixteen thousand days of _sport_ before drunken chance left the chains loose.

Sixteen thousand days of being ‘Blue’. 

He almost tells them that’s his name. So used to nothing else. A careless moniker slapped onto him for the color of his hair and eyes. Easy to remember. But he hasn’t seen one of his own species in those sixteen thousand days, and he’s still the child that had been stolen away from his clan in so many ways. As the dust settles on a chance combat they found themselves allies in, a string of stolen children freed and slavers butchered in the grass around them, he’d dropped his swords to the earth and dipped his head submissively to Caduceus Clay the moment the other firbolg had started towards him. 

Brunnera knew they weren’t truly the same, the cleric finer featured than himself, from warmer climates and lush forests. Caduceus was not from the high tundra and mountains that Brunnera faintly remembered of his earliest days. Brunnera with his thicker, bay roan fur and heavier build, more bovine features and the long coiling tail behind him; they were far from the same but they were kin of a kind. He must have looked like a wraith then. Sickly thin and ragged with only four months of freedom under his belt, the collar on his throat and drenched in slaver’s blood where he had decapitated and disemboweled more of his fair share in the fight, trying desperately to look small and servile.

Caduceus had spoken kindly and softly to him, like the frightened animal he was, even complimented him on his cerulean hair and tail plume. The grave cleric gently coaxed his name from the fighter. 

Brunnera. He hadn’t wanted to be ‘Blue’ for so long, he jumped at the chance to offer up a name he no longer fit to the empathetic kinsman. The name of some plant with heart shaped leaves and sprays of blue flowers that thrived in soft, wet earth along river and stream banks. It didn’t suit a fighter freshly freed from slavery. The rest of the Nein follow in Caduceus’ vein, greeting him and introducing themselves. He nervously responds in afflicted, broken speech but even then they’re kind, waiting for him to grind out the halting words until he falls mute again and instead of letting the silence linger fill it with their bright and boisterous speech. 

He helps them take the children back to a village he’d skirted completely the day before. He walks at the front of the march, next to the sharp tongued monk Beau. He had felt her studying him, watching all he did, eyes falling to the collar more than once. Brunnera paid her no mind, more preoccupied with the train of children that began where a little one had gripped the end of his tail and hung on tight and linked all their hands together behind.

‘Mama duck’ Beau had said with a slight tilt of her lips. 

He’d been sure they were going to leave him there in the village. Their work was done, the children scattered back to their parents, a purse of coins collected. He might have stood there listlessly, like a starved dog, as they walked away had not the sapphire tiefling looped her arm in his and pulled him along with the party. Jester filled the silence that Beau had kept, chatting non-stop that Brunnera found soothing. He paid little attention to the conversation itself. He may have promised to convert his religion. He may have agreed to enjoy pastries and cakes he had never tasted before. He was caught in their current and he couldn’t be more grateful. 

A whirlwind of new experiences on a raw soul. Shopping. A bath house. A bookshop. An inn. A bed. 

He’d never had a bed. 

Brunnera was certain again, come morn, they would have moved on. Felt their debt to him for his coincidental help paid. 

But they’d been there, in the common room of the inn, table heaped high with platters of food and deep flagons of drinks. None hesitated to call him over. Called him by his real name. They’d piled his plate high, demanding he try everything, pushing a warm mug into his hands of something soothing and herbal. They pour over a map, make a plan, break it, make another and break that one, too. They ask him where he’s from but he confesses in broken halting words not knowing where on the map it was. North. North in mountains and snow and vast timberline forests. 

They aren’t going north. Neither is he. He’s afraid to go back. To find his clan, if there are any left. He’s not like them. He’s not like the Nein either. 

He’s feral. He knows he is. The blood in his fur and cold slaughter still fresh in his senses. Everything still smells coppery. 

The Nein ask him what he’s seeking. Where he’ll go. He only has half an answer to give, tugging at the curved bar of metal on his throat. To get the collar off, find someone who knows it and can break it from him. He won’t be free until it’s gone. His speech dies again before he can finish and he can’t meet their eyes. 

Beau unties one of her sashes and loops the blue fabric around his neck, fussing with it a bit before tying a careful knot. Of which the gingery, freckled wizard Caleb instantly unties and reties in a far neater configuration. Nott the Brave, roguish with a grin of sharp teeth tells him it matches his eyes and his hair and his tail. 

Sixteen thousand and seventy two days since the sight of his neck wasn’t distorted by the collar. 

They know an enchanter in Zadash. A firbolg like himself, like Caduceus, but unlike them as well. Another strange kinsman. 

The Hexblade Fjord tells him to come, come along to Zadash with them. Maybe the enchanter can remove the collar from him, if Caleb himself cannot do so in the meantime. The whole of them agree, already telling him of Zadash, a grand city to the south.

Brunnera has no other compass to follow, no other loyalties that haven’t been broken by time and distance and the change in himself that he fears. These people have been kind to him as no one has in all his life. The firbolg fighter knows he lacks in many things but he hopes himself not foolish enough to turn away from that. 

To Zadash.

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you enjoyed! I wrote this more for myself and will continue the series. I have quite a bit stockpiled and pre-written for future content already but wanted to put a point of origin to anchor everything into the Critical Role fandom.


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